Are you busy?

I'm sitting surrounded by books, notes, course handbooks, assignments and other bits and pieces all to do with work. My laptop is perched on my lap (of course) and shares the space with a sleeping cat.
How much work have I done today?
Very little.
I keep telling myself that if I had a proper office or study I'd get loads of work done - I'd be able to leave things out and come back to them, I'd be able to shut the door on it all and go back during the early hours if I wanted.
I think I'd be just the same as I am now - avoiding work.

The really strange thing is that I love my job - it's the best job in the world. I get to have interesting conversations about literature or art every week. I get to read and study things that I would probably just skim over because now I have to know about them in order to teach them. And on top of all that I even get paid.
So why don't I just get down to it and work?

I enjoy the procrastination of reading blogs, of checking Facebook, of updating Twitter, of laughing at the latest posts on b3ta.

Take the internet away from me and my productivity would rocket. I'd also probably read more too.

The answer is clear.




But I don't want to change.

Indepence and getting out there

I bought some books online last night - buying books is a huge weakness of mine. Where most people have a vice like eating too much chocolate (I have that too), or smoking, or drinking, I can't walk past a bookshop without just popping in and leaving with two or three potential hours of escape.

These books were slightly different though, they weren't my usual fare of novels but rather these were poetry books. Not well known anthologies containing Elliot, Keats, Byron and Hughes but contemporary poetry written by poets who have to fund their writing through working in bars, bookshops, the Post Office, teaching. In fact all the 'normal' jobs that the rest of the population does. Yet these few souls also have the drive, the necessity of spirit to make time to write. The same could be said of many artists - they pull pints or teach sullen teenagers just so they have the money to create their real work.

And I'm looking at a card I bought in a bookshop a couple of months ago, it has a quote from Goethe printed upon it,

"Whatever you can do,
Or dream you can,
BEGIN IT!
Boldness has genius,
Power and magic in it."

So if you're one of those people who has always dreamt of writing a novel or climbing Everest, begin it now. Make plans now.

And if you want poetry published then start to read what's already out there, what's being written now, today by your postman or your neighbour. A good place to start is at either of these websites -

Blackheath Books - they're also on MySpace
and
Fortune Teller Press



That all feels like an advert or a motivational speech! But I suppose I'm feeling very fired up by all of this at the moment - I think it's because it's the beginning of the year - new year's resolutions and all that, and because the sun is shining and I always feel like achieving something when the weather is good.

Okay, sermon over.

ST. AGNES’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death....

These are the opening lines to Keats' poem, 'The Eve of St.Agnes', published in 1820. It's one of my favourite Romantic poems but it's particularly fitting at the moment because the Eve of St.Agnes is on the 20th of January, so only a couple of weeks away. These lines completely sum up how cold and bleak it is right now with snow on the ground and that grinding bitter chill that the wind has in January. Snow always brings a silence and draws in the world as sound no longer carries over the soft white blanket.

I was looking for a photograph which exists in my head - a snow covered field with a broken down fence picked out in black charcoal lines against the white canvas of the sky and to the left in the distance stands a solitary hare, the only sign of life in a wintry scene.

Very poetic.

However, no one appears to have taken this photograph or painted this image yet, so after a brief search on DeviantArt I found this rather beautiful one by Polaroid Dragon, it's called Dying Daylight.

And now after thinking about the cold I'm off out to a yoga class.